...and the Fifth Horseman Is Fear

1968) ...And The Fifth Horseman Is Fear/ ...a pátý jezdec je Strach (In Czechoslovakia with English subtitles) WAR/ DRAMA

Almost plot less where the film states the situation without telling a story, but it is still effective once the viewer hangs onto it about actual oppression and dictatorship felt by an once renowned ex-Jewish doctor, Dr. Braun(Miroslav Machácek) while living in the Nazi invaded town of Czechoslovakia. He eventually regains his identity once he was asked to perform surgery to save a stranger injured by a gun shot wound! Possesses the same emotions as "The Pawnbroker" starring Rod Steiger! If watched obliviously without reading the synopsis would make the first half hour hard to get into since it's rather plot less, and was able to tolerate it once I listened to the introduction told by Robert Osbourne of "Turner Classic Movies". Interesting note that the film had to be approved by gov't censors who at the time it was made would not approve the film at all, had they known it was about the Czech authorities working alongside with the Nazis!

Really great Czech film of the 60´s. I think the best picture by the director Zbynek Brynych. Armin Braun (performed by Miroslav Machacek) is a doctor of Jewish origin. In spite of the fact he could be killed by the Nazis and the whole block-of-flat with him, he is performing an operation of an injured revolter. While the operation is finished he has to find morphine to give it to the revolter because of big pains he has after the medical help.

We can see the excellent performance of Miroslav Machacek in the monologue part (by the way which lasts 3 minutes!!) in which he is deciding to help or not to help. I can recommend this movie to everyone who likes great acting in a good story.

I saw this movie when I was a teenager and it's stayed with me ever since. Why it has never been digitalized for VHS and/or DVD is a mystery to me. This movie captures the true essence of horrible Nazi atrocities without today's special effects or computer graphics and is able to communicate it's primal message to the viewer with the best acting, directing and film noir that I've ever seen. Strangely, the film (titled "The Fith Horseman is Fear" for American audiences) leaves you with a sense of hope and is somewhat uplifting - I strongly recommend it and hope that this message helps attract enough attention for someone to format it for home viewing.

A prophecy in Zechariah 6: 1-3 mentions red horses, black horses, white horses, and grey horses riding out into the world with no real mention of their riders. But in Revelation 6:2-7 in a description of the Apocalypse the riders are given some characteristics: the white horse has a rider with a bow who "went out conquering and to conquer"; the rider of the red horse takes peace from the earth and is given a great sword; the rider on the black horse has a balance and illustrates the calamitous rise in prices of scarce and necessary food; and the rider of the pale horse's name is Death.

Any type of war engenders cruelties. But when hope is displaced by fear, survival is surely threatened. As a fellow doctor tells Dr. Braun, in search of morphine to abate the pain of a wounded man on whom he has operated "We have up to 20 Jewish suicides a day - we manage to save most of them." Certainly a society that has placards proliferating everywhere admonishing "Inform promptly and accurately and insure your own safety," along with the 44811 informer number to call would not give much cause for hope. But Dr. Braun does not seem to give up hope completely - even when all is dark he says "A man is as he thinks - you can't change that." And yet Dr. Braun is assailed by fear also. More than once we hear martial music without seeing a band and Dr. Braun also sees a man with some sort of van who is there one moment and gone the next. Do we see what we fear most? It's hard to tell.

I found the musical score very intriguing - starting off before the opening credits was a brass fanfare, merging into flutes and then saxophones (and/or other reed instruments) and then back to brass and flutes throughout the opening credit sequences against a backdrop of massed notices on walls. The succession of one type of instrument being replaced by another was continued throughout the film.

I was limited to what the different wall placards were saying by occasional subtitles. It would have been interesting to know if the placards dealt with more than just informing. There was one word seen repeatedly - it seemed to start out "PYSA" or "PYHLA" or perhaps "PYKASRA" - the font type made it difficult to decipher . . . and my Czech is rather minimal, ah no . ..

The film music ends much as it began with brass playing to images of trains, then flute and then brass with images of cars then more flutes followed by piano with views of crowds and then ending with the brass section again.

"Death's a trifle if it's not my own."

But Dr. Braun carries on as best he can - "A man is as he thinks - you can't change that."

I spent one winter systematically going through each & every film in the London Czech Centre's Video library, & of all the films, I returned to this one time & again. It's a fantastic & bizarre film, where the state of despair that existed under communism is encoded in a strange blending of the past , the present & film

noir.

There is the feeling that an ad-hoc attempt to get past the censors unwittingly produces an utterly Czechoslovakian perspective.To those familiar with Eastern Europe pre 1989, the sense of time having become stuck & disorientated & playing games with your perception is part of

the magic of this film.

My fondness for this film is rooted in a nostalgia or need to remember

communist Europe. I first visited Prague in the mid 1980's & i was so struck that the Prague of this film replicated almost identically the Prague i found & came to know 20 years later, in the last years of Communism. My nights at the Cafe

Slavia were exactly as the Jazz club scenes depicted in the film, with the same dramas & the same characters. Also the sense of mistrust , betrayal & of being watched & listened to & the perverse relation to Psychiatry. I thought this connection was very profound, & it made me think this film was, in some way, important . Both the film & my experiences in Prague sat either side of the Brief thaw of the late sixties. They bypassed that optimistic period & looked directly at each other; the one reflecting a National trauma of the war & Communist conversion & the other reflecting the trauma of 2 decades of

stagnation. Often when people think of Czech New Wave, they think in terms of 60's youth & Prague spring. But this film brought home to me how brief that

period really was & it's focus is the context from which that period rose &

returned to; a shockingly, relentless, hyper-unreal, oppressive isolation which was the former state of Czechoslovakia. Go see, fantastic -